At O'M Studio in downtown Burlington, Vt., salon owner Don O'Connell told New England Cable News he couldn't make it through a long day of appointments without plenty of cups of coffee. "It's bad; six," he chuckled, counting the number of cups he drinks a day.

That keeps his Keurig machine busy. It brews individual cups of coffee fresh for customers and staff. "Ten, 15, 20 even 30 cups of coffee a day, it's nice that each one of those is fresh," O'Connell said.

Customers like O'Connell have helped make Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. of Waterbury, Vt. a pioneering leader in the single-serve coffee world. GMCR owns the Keurig brand. The company's annual report for 2011 showed it had just over $1.7-billion in net K-Cup sales that year. Keurig brewers and the associated K-Cups produced the lion's share of GMCR's total sales, the report noted.

This weekend, key patent protection on the design of the individual coffee packs expired. "Now the market for K-Cups is open," explained University of Vermont School of Business Administration professor Allison Kingsley.

Kingsley explained competitors can now market their own coffee pods and undercut the prices of the Vermont-packaged ones. "There could potentially be compression on prices; and pretty radical compression," Kingsley added. "The opinion on Wall Street is that [GMCR leaders] haven't prepared well for this moment."

Kingsley told NECN this patent expiration leaves GMCR with a big question about its identity: is it a beverage company that could lose sales to generic manufacturers, or is it an innovation company that can outpace the competition with new product launches? "They saw K-Cups, this great new thing. And so now they're trying to find the next great thing," Kingsley explained. "And they may do it. They may pull the rabbit out of the hat."

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters issued a written statement in response to NECN's question about what the patent expiration means for GMCR. It read:

"Consumers are passionate about their Keurig Single Cup brewers and the ease, simplicity and choice of 30 brands and more than 200 varieties it brings to daily routine. While we view our patents as very valuable, and we have many of them, it's this passionate enthusiasm and consumers' desire to tell friends, relatives and neighbors about their Keurig experience that has and will continue to drive GMCR's opportunity for continued growth."

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Vice President of Investor Relations & Corporate Communications Suzanne DuLong also noted that there are many exciting things happening at the coffee giant that have not gotten the widespread media attention the patent expiration has. "Both Green Mountain Coffee and Keurig [were] named 'Brands of the Year' in their respective categories in the 2012 Harris Poll EquiTrend Study," DuLong wrote in an email citing an example.

The company also recently unveiled a new brewer called the Vue, which is capable of delivering hotter coffee and fancier drinks like cappuccinos. Some analysts saw it as a potential buffer to the threat of new competition.

Caffeine-fueled Don O'Connell predicted that whatever happens with the fallout from the patent expiration, he'll likely keep buying the familiar brands that have become routine for him and his clients. "I'm planning on sticking with the Keurig," he said, sipping a cup of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters coffee.